


i will hold on tighter 'til the afterglow

by MaddieandChimney



Series: Soulmate AU's [2]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Soulmate AU, descriptions of injury and of trauma, mentions of domestic violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28802553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddieandChimney/pseuds/MaddieandChimney
Summary: It's been a few months since Maddie arrived in LA when Doug finds her..Follow Up to 'i won't be silent and i won't let go'
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Maddie Buckley, Howie "Chimney" Han & Henrietta "Hen" Wilson, Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Series: Soulmate AU's [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095764
Comments: 10
Kudos: 21
Collections: 9-1-1 Tales





	1. Chapter 1

Chimney can see the look on their faces when he opens his eyes, this time a little more aware of what is going on around him. The first time, he can remember Christopher being there before his eyes had closed again and as much as he had tried to fight how exhausted he was, the medication and the exhaustion won over. He couldn’t believe it - two surgeries in just over a year. Twice he could have died. And he’d only just found his soulmate, he was just getting to know her beyond the damage that had been done to their bodies over the years and it’s quite possible that this is the way it ends. 

Maddie’s wounds on his body take longer to heal when he’s injured, too. He’d learned that the hard way and it causes a horrific ache inside of him to know that she’s out there somewhere, suffering from her own injuries and his own. It hurts more than anything else could. 

Part of him wants to close his eyes again and not see the next bruise or feel another mark on his body, knowing exactly what Maddie is going through. Before he had met her, it was hard enough but now he has a face to picture and a person he has gotten to know so much over the last few months. He’d have always felt the loss if something happened to her but if she were taken from him now and he was left to live out the rest of his days, the world would feel even more cruel than it already did. Honestly, if she dies, he may as well go with her. 

He gulps when his eyes meet those of his best friend, her hand held tightly in his before he takes a deep, trembling breath. “Can I see?” He doesn’t have to say anymore than that for Hen to understand what he means, watching as she looks from him to Bobby and then to Eddie in the corner before finally, back at him. 

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” 

“I can feel it, I can feel every damn thing he’s doing to her, will seeing it make a difference?” 

It’s Bobby who talks next, pulling his attention from Hen who stands at one side of his bed, to his other friend, on the opposite side. “Exactly…” His eyes are filled with sympathy but also fear, and Chimney knows that it’s only because they care about him but he needs to see before the marks fade. He needs to remember, add them to the list that haunts him every single night. They’re soulmates and meeting each other had been… joyful and getting to know her beyond her injuries was even more so. They hadn’t even kissed yet, although he had imagined that moment a thousand times over, waiting for the day she would be ready and now he might never know. 

They take a moment and he thinks they’re going to deny him his request until Bobby, much like he did with rebar, pulls out his phone, handing it to him this time so he can see the camera. Chimney is slow to pull his hand from Hen’s, immediately missing the comfort of her touch as he lifts his hand instead to the healing cut on his cheek, trembling fingers moving over the black eye and then the cut on his lip. His head hurts and he doesn’t know if it’s his pain or hers, his heart hurts and he knows deep down that’s his pain and his alone but he’s sure she feels that longing ache in her chest. 

Even if they hadn’t started dating because as much as they knew that they were meant to be together, they both knew she needed time to learn how to be Maddie Buckley again. She found a job at dispatch which she absolutely adored, she had friends for the first time in years and he had heard her laugh more and more over the last few weeks. Maddie had been through so much and yet somehow, she still managed to light up a room when she walked into it. He winces, a hiss leaving his mouth and filling the otherwise silent room when he grabs his arm and looks at the finger shaped bruises already appearing. Hen, who had opened up her arms for Maddie straight away, knowing how important friendship was and how important finding his soulmate was to him, has tears in her eyes when she pulls his hand from the mark. 

“Buck and Athena are looking for her, they’re going to find her, okay? I know this isn’t how your story ends, Chim, I know that.” There’s so much vindication in her voice and he wants to believe her, he wants to believe her more than anything but something inside of him is telling him that this is the end of the road. That the universe truly was cruel enough to give him a glimpse of happiness and snatch it away from him so quickly. He can still remember opening the door to his apartment, expecting the delivery guy and getting the man he immediately recognised from the pictures Maddie had shown him instead. There was no time to react and Maddie was in the bathroom, she must have felt the knife going into his stomach before she even knew that Doug was there. And then he can remember her crying his name whilst he bled out, so certain he was going to die in the doorway of his apartment. 

It was a miracle when he had survived rebar but he had convinced himself it was for a reason and that reason was Maddie. This was a miracle, too. He’d been stabbed three times, another surgery under his belt, another near-death experience he didn’t want. It was a miracle and he hated every damn time someone told him that because what would be an actual miracle is being able to hold Maddie in his arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay and actually mean it. 

“As long as it hurts, it means she’s still alive.” He finally says out loud, in the hopes it will stop the pain on his friends faces. It does nothing but at least Bobby moves to sit down in a chair and Hen takes his hand in her own once more as she nods. That’s all he needs to cling to because as much as it hurts him to know that she’s in pain right now, each bruise and cut is a reminder that she’s still out there fighting. “They’ll find her, right? They’ll find her alive?” His voice breaks, tears falling down his face before he closes his eyes tightly, not sure he can stand to look at the faces of the people he loves the most. 

No one answers him, he doesn’t expect them to, tearing his hand from Hen’s grip when he feels a stinging sensation against his cheek, as though he’s been slapped without the physical force behind it. If he wasn’t in a hospital bed, he’d love to be the one causing Doug even an ounce of the pain he’s caused Maddie over the years. He slips his hand beneath the blanket, digging his nails into his thigh where he knows, or hopes, that Doug won’t see the marks, waiting for the sensation to be returned. 

She could be unconscious or worse, his heart thumping against his chest until a familiar feeling is returned in the same spot a few seconds later. “Is she alive?” Bobby whispers, knowing their routine, knowing what the two of them have had to establish to try and determine if the other one was still safe after so many years of feeling but never knowing. Chimney gulps, giving a small nod of her head, willing sleep to come because that has to be easier than dealing with the amount of physical and emotional pain that is weighing down on him right then. Anything has to be better than that. 

.

He’s dead. And Maddie knows she should have known that she would be the person responsible for the death of the one man in the world who had shown her more care and love in the last few months than Doug ever had in their sixteen years together. It seems fitting, in a way, that she would settle for someone who wasn’t her soulmate because leaving was too terrifying, only to finally find the one and have him taken away from her so suddenly. The only warning she had before her husband had stormed into the bathroom was the sudden blow to the stomach and the blood that stained her pyjama top a few seconds later. She hadn’t had any time to react beyond the horrific pain that had pulsated through her, the fear at what had happened to the man she hadn’t even kissed yet. 

She wishes she knew now what she had been waiting for. 

Maddie forces herself to open her eyes as she looks at the road ahead of them, taking a deep, trembling breath, not daring to look to her left at her husband. She can see his grip on the steering wheel, his hands that have hurt her, and by default Chimney, too many times. And now he had finally done it, the one thing he always said he would - he’d killed her soulmate, so she was alone in the world, just as he was. Just the way he had always wanted it and she had led him straight to Chimney’s door. 

Her fingers graze along the crescent shaped marks she had left into her arm a few hours before, trying over and over again until Doug had noticed what she was doing and she had felt a pain in her cheek and then her head when she made impact with the window. And then her world had gone dark and she had been thankful for the peace. Even when she had awoken, there were no marks on her arm, nothing that could have told her that he was still alive and she knows it would take a miracle but… it was all she had to cling onto. All that remained of him were her memories of him making her smile and laugh over the last few months, and of his gentle touch, his light teasing of her not knowing what Mission Impossible was and his smile. His beautiful smile that had embedded itself in her heart and mind every day since she had first seen it. And then there was the burning pain in her stomach, his injuries slowly healing on her own body, whilst they never would on his. 

She doesn’t want to be awake, she doesn’t even want to be alive but there she is, whilst her husband drives her away from the new life she had built for herself. Maddie had gotten brave, too complacent and she had known that he would find her the moment she had filed for divorce. She had started all over again without him and found herself a new job, a new apartment, new friends and her soulmate. She had gotten to know her brother again when Doug never would have let her. Buck had always talked about finding his soulmate in the dreamy sense, with a smile on his face and a light in his eyes. He had spoken of it as though it was everything to him, which it was, and knowing what they knew, it wasn’t easy to hear. Doug had convinced himself that her brother would put ideas in her head that would lead her to her leaving. Little had both of them known, she’d come to the conclusion on her own, three years after cutting Buck out of her life for his own protection. 

“Just do it already.” Somehow, she finds the courage to say something aloud, glancing over at him. He’d beaten her down for years and she was so close to finding a piece of joy that he had found so easy to steal. He’d always been good at that, even before she had realised that he was gaslighting her and had been from the moment she had met him. The confusion crosses his face before she can continue and she remembers how he had stolen her voice from her so long ago. Her voice is void of any emotion as she talks, glancing at the road in front of her. She can taste blood in her mouth, the stinging pain in her side reminding her of what she had lost. “Kill me,” She clarifies, “that’s your plan, right? Kill me, kill Chimney, hopefully do the world a favour and kill yourself before it’s done.” 

Maddie doesn’t look at him, holding back the tears, refusing to let him know the terror and the sadness that swells inside of her but she can hear the desperation in his voice when he talks, “Why would I kill you, Maddie? I don’t wanna hurt you. I love you. I can’t imagine my life without you, you’re all I have.” 

He’s not wrong. With no soulmate that he had ever known off and his parents dead, Doug truly was all alone in the world but she never had to be. “I was never yours to have.” She looks at him, “And you knew that from the very beginning but you didn’t care. All you’ve ever cared about is yourself and what you wanted and you let me believe that you… that you were the one.” 

“You loved me. I proved that this soulmate thing is bullshit. You loved me despite it all. You wouldn’t have given me a second glance if you had known the truth and I loved you from the moment we spoke. I couldn’t just… let you go. That’s true love, Maddie. What we have is real.” 

Maybe she would believe him if the words weren’t accentuated with a tight grip on her arm and if the feel of his hand on her skin wasn’t a stark reminder of every single time he had laid a hand on her. “You manipulated me into loving you, that’s not true love, you have to see that.” He lets go of her arm and her eyes move back towards the road; it had been dark when he had dragged her from Chimney’s apartment and now the sun was signalling a whole new day and all she longs for is to have woken up in Chimney’s arms as she had done so many times before. Only focusing on everything up until the moment the door had knocked and she went to wash up as he went to answer it, she supposes there were worse ways to spend her last night. She had laughed, Chimney had gently brushed her hair from her face and she had thought about pressing her lips against his for a moment, not knowing it would be her last chance. 

Maddie is about to talk again, about to beg him to just put an end to it because they had been driving around tirelessly for hours. Chimney had died, the stranger who had tried to save her life at the gas station had died… it was enough. It was too much. But then she feels it, her bottom lip trembling when the tears she had been holding back start to fall, a pain in her thigh. An unfamiliar place but a familiar feeling, the kind that gives her a fleeting piece of hope whilst they drive further and further away from Los Angeles, away from her home… from the man who owns a piece of her heart. If they go too far, they may never find her. Chimney’s alive and that’s something worth fighting for, right? If he had made it through… maybe she was owed a miracle as well. She takes a breath, glancing at Doug to make sure he’s not looking at her before she digs her nails into her own thigh, as hard as she can in the hopes he’ll know that she’s going to fight to get home to him. 

There’s no thought behind what she does next, nothing beyond grabbing someone’s attention, forcing Doug to stop, maybe killing him… maybe killing them both but at least she could tell herself that she fought. Her hands grip the steering wheel, turning it with more force than she ever intended before she hears the sound of glass smashing and metal hitting something as her body lunges forward with the force and then everything goes black. 


	2. Chapter 2

Chimney wakes with a gasp, two hands gripping onto his shoulders and holding him down before he can lurch up and do himself any further damage. There’s a burning pain coursing through his body, so much so that he can’t figure out where it’s coming from when he opens his eyes to blood pouring down his face. “Stay still, Chimney, stay with us.” 

Bobby is holding him down on one side and Hen by the other, their quick reactions being the only thing to stop him from ripping open his stitches. His chest is aching, his entire body feels as though it’s on fire and he wants to scream. This has to be it, it has to be over and a part of him, the biggest part of him if he’s honest with himself, wants to push both of his closest friends off of him so he rip open his wound himself, maybe bleed out before anyone can help. All he has ever wanted is to love and to be loved, it’s the one thing that kept him going through everything, just the knowledge that one day, he would have what his mother never had the chance to. 

Maybe this was their fate, the family curse. His father and his father before him had never felt that longing ache inside of them, had never felt the injury of another mar their skin and they had married despite it all. His grandfather five times and his father, three. Maybe that was his destiny. And then there was his mother; his beautiful, kind, loving mother who had lost her soulmate far too soon but had told him that it had given her him, so she didn’t feel any resentment for her loss. She believed in something after all of this anyway but Chimney had always been more in the present. He wanted a family of his own, he wanted to feel so completely and utterly head over heels in love for another person… and he had that, for a fleeting few months, from the second he had laid eyes on Madeline Buckley, he had it. And now it was gone. 

“It’s going to be okay, you’re going to be okay.” He hadn’t seen Eddie leave the room, but he comes back in with a doctor and a nurse whilst Hen looks at him with tears in her eyes and he wants to scream at her that no, it’s absolutely not going to be okay. Maddie is gone, she has to be gone because he’s in unimaginable pain and she always told him what Doug would have done to her if he found her, if he found the both of them. Chimney can remember the look in the other man’s eyes when he had stabbed him and the smile on his face before he had stepped over his body and into the apartment. He was evil and it hurts to even think of Maddie spending sixteen years of her life with this man who never deserved her in the first place. 

Not that he feels as though he deserves her but he wants to spend the rest of their lives together trying to show her that he does. There was this incessant need inside of him to somehow… make up for the years that they have lost, the pain that they have suffered through… even if it’s never possible, he wants to try. He wanted to try. 

Chimney can hear them over the sound of his blood pulsating in his ears, he can hear the panic in Hen’s voice when she tries to explain how the injuries aren’t his own (although he’s entirely certain that much is clear, all he’s done is lie in a hospital bed). He can hear the word sedation being thrown around and he wants to scream at them because he deserves to feel this, he deserves to know how she died… how she suffered. And if he wakes up and the injuries are gone, he won’t ever remember what happened, he won’t be able to add it to the morbid list he has running in his head - every broken bone, every graze, every cut, every stinging sensation against his cheek… he remembers it all, even if he wishes he didn’t. 

He can remember the first time he had gently run his fingers over her cheek, trying to memorise the way she looked and how beautiful she was and never truly able to grasp the fact that she was his. Maybe not entirely yet but one day… they were each other’s person, two pieces of the same puzzle. He can remember the first time her hand was in his, the first time he’d pressed his forehead to hers… the first time she had fallen asleep curled up in his side. There are so many memories he can cling to.

Maybe his mom was right, maybe Maddie would be waiting for him on the other side, if only Hen and Bobby would let him go. Fingers run through his hair and he’s looking into the desperate eyes of his best friend and he wants to say something, he wants to beg her to just make the pain stop and then he feels the prick of a needle going into his arm and then everything goes black. At least it’s peaceful, he supposes. 

. 

It comes back in flashes when she finally opens her eyes to the shining lights of a hospital room. Maddie can remember opening her eyes after the car had crashed, the agonising pain that had left a scream falling from her lips that didn’t sound or feel like her own. Doug was alive, she could see the way his chest was rising and falling, hear the shallow breaths that filled the silence of the car once she had gotten past the initial shock of the pain. 

Maddie forces her eyes back open the second they lull to a close, trying to keep herself in the present, holding the hand that’s in her own a little tighter before she turns her head to look into the blue eyes of her little brother. “Maddie…” It’s a relief to hear his voice but she finds herself being pulled back into the car, watching as her husband’s eyes open until he’s staring at her and they’re both reaching for the gun he had tucked in his pocket. She had known nothing other than death would stop him, he would never let her have a happy ending or any ending at all if it didn’t involve him. 

Buck’s hand is pressed against her forehead, brushing her hair from her face in a way that pulls her back to him, tears slipping down her cheeks as she stares up at him. “You’re gonna be okay.” The words should be reassuring but her heart breaks when she sees the tears falling down her brother’s face and she longs to reach out for him but every movement is exhausting and she can already feel her eyes starting to close again. 

Doug manages to grab the gun first and she takes a breath before she hears the sound of the trigger being pulled and then… nothing. Silence. Maddie thinks, just for those few moments when she’s alone in the car with a still, pale Doug, that in his last few seconds of life he had chosen to spare her. She knows from being in the ambulance and hearing the paramedic shout for his partner to hurry up, that he had weighed up the options between the one bullet he had left, knowing that he was much more likely to survive his injuries than she was hers.

Maddie supposes she was due a miracle of her own that day.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed before she’s awake again and the world doesn’t seem quite so clouded as it had before. Buck is still there, looking down at his phone until he must see her shift slightly in the corner of his eye and suddenly, it’s discarded and he’s standing up, fingers running through her hair as he gives her a watery smile “Hey, sleepy head.” He must know what she wants to ask without her having to say it out loud because he continues, “Five days… you’ve been drifting in and out for five days…” It seems strange to think that she’s still tired, that even now, she wouldn’t say no to even more sleep, although she hopes that she can get to a place where the person she feared the most wouldn’t be there. 

“Howie?” She finally whispers, her voice sounding foreign to her, hoarse and tired, causing her brother to quickly reach for the jug of water next to her bed, watching as he pours some out into a cup with slightly trembling hands. For a moment, she thinks the worst and wonders how she could have been so selfish to have caused a car crash, knowing that he would have suffered too. Maybe it had been too much for his heart, maybe her injuries had caused a complication with his injuries. 

Then Buck smiles, as he helps her sit up enough to take a sip through the straw, the relief immediate before he talks. “He’s doing okay, still in the hospital, still recovering but he pulled through. You both did.” There’s an element of pride in his voice and Maddie knows how much he loves the both of them and how happy he was that her soulmate was someone he had known, someone he trusted as a friend, a colleague and as a brother. “You’re gonna get transferred out of here, don’t worry, we’re a bit far from home here.”

Despite the pain, Maddie finds herself smiling, nodding her head a little, “He doesn’t hate me?” She’s almost afraid of the answer because she wouldn’t blame him if he did, just because they were soulmates, it didn’t mean they would get their happy ending, not after everything she had put him through when sometimes, most of the time, she feels as though she had a choice. There were two paths she could have taken when she was nineteen, she can’t help but blame herself for the one she had travelled. 

“Hate you? God, no. Never. That man loves you, you have to see that. He’s so excited to see you again, even threatened to discharge himself to get here to you but we managed to convince him that you most definitely wouldn’t approve.” Maddie lets out a small laugh, lifting up a hand to rest against her brother’s cheek, shaking her head. 

“Definitely wouldn’t. I love him, too.” Her eyes are starting to close again, her hand dropping to the bed, hoping she gets a chance to say it to his face soon, when she’s home. She just wants to be home.


	3. Chapter 3

Maddie’s eyes flutter open the moment he’s wheeled into the room, as though somehow, she just knew he was there. It’s enough to make him smile at least, slowly standing up, one hand pressing to his side as he fumbles to take her hand in his own. He finds himself wishing, and not for the first time, that the powers that be would heal her as quickly as the wounds from her experience had healed on his own body. As much as every injury he had felt as they were being done, hurt, it’s a whole other kind of pain when he’s seeing them for himself. Her broken arm, cuts from the shards of glass in the car, the healing bruises on her face and the others that he had felt but couldn’t see right then. 

He’d been waiting a week to see her, to touch her and to just… know for himself that she was okay. Or as okay as she could be. A week as he laid in a hospital bed, every minute ticking by slowly, knowing he wouldn’t feel whole again until she was near enough. Despite everything that had happened, there’s still an overwhelming sense of happiness that rushes through him the second he had looked at her. He can remember his body had relaxed for the first time since everything that had happened, when she was wheeled into the hospital that morning, at least ten minutes before Hen had confirmed to him that Maddie had been transferred. His body just knew, and had been crying out for her to be near enough to him since. 

His thumb gently brushes over the back of her hand, slowly moving to sit down at the edge of her bed, taking a breath as he does. Chimney’s own wounds are healing, slowly but surely, causing the skin around the surgical incision to tighten in a way that leaves him feeling discomfort much of the time. “You’re okay.” Maddie is the first to break the silence, even though words don’t really need to be said between the two of them, they never have. It’s amazing how she is the first person he has ever met who just understands him on a deeper level, beyond anything he’s ever known. Beyond anything he ever thought possible. 

The words get stuck in his throat, unable to stop the tears from falling as he holds her hand just a little bit tighter, unable to stop himself from leaning down ever so slightly, despite the hurt it causes him, to press his lips to her cheek. Her smile grows and he wants to burst into tears of pure joy at the sight because he had never thought he would see her again. “We’re okay.” Her voice sounds again and he wishes he could find the words to tell her what hearing her again means to him, how it causes this inordinate amount of joy to swell within him. 

Somehow, despite the lump that remains in his throat, he finally talks, nodding his head as he does, “We’re okay,” He repeats, and it doesn’t feel enough, nothing ever will, “I thought… I really thought…” 

“I know, me too.” Slowly, Maddie moves to sit up, her hand gone from his and for a fleeting moment, he feels empty until she moves her hand to gently cup his cheek, her thumb brushing along his bottom lip as she looks at him. “I don’t want to rush into anything or push you into something you might not be ready for. I-I mean… look at everything I’ve put you through but…” 

There’s hope in that word but he finds himself stopping her anyway, shaking his head because if he could have anything right then, it would be for her to stop feeling guilty. Does he wish that she would have left Doug when she had found out he wasn’t her soulmate? Of course he does. But does he blame her for not doing so? Not in a million years because he knows it goes beyond anything he could ever truly comprehend. Not everything is black and white, especially not when it comes to matters of the heart, he supposes. “You didn’t put me through anything, none of this was your fault. And I hate that it happened to you, I hate every part of it but… it doesn’t change how I feel about you or how I feel about us. And you don’t have to be ready for anything because my calendar is wide open for you, always.” Their connection was written in the stars, it went beyond anything either of them could truly understand but he was a patient man and Maddie was worth the wait. 

Her lips are gentle against his own, a few seconds later and he can taste the salt of her tears on her lips as he carefully moves to press his own hand against her uninjured cheek. The kiss doesn’t last long but he still has a giddy grin on his face when she pulls back, her nose gently nudging against his before she moves to lay back down. “Will you lay with me? I feel better when you’re around.” 

He feels the same, the pain is still there and the sadness lingers, maybe it will for a long time but there’s this joy that remains whenever he is around her or if she is near or… when he’s thinking about her. He misses her when she’s gone, he’s barely known her anytime at all but he feels as though he has known her forever, and in a way… he has. A part of him wants to say no, afraid of hurting her because he knows that she had surgery barely a week ago, as did he and they’re both still healing but he can never say no to her. Maddie shifts enough to make some space and he moves to occupy the space next to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and trying not to flinch at the movement before he presses a kiss to the top of her head “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, so much.” She whispers, resting her head on his shoulder before she tilts her head up to look at him, his heart thumping when he feels lips against his neck and then his chin. Her fingers graze down along the bridge of his nose, until they move along his stubble covered chin, as though she’s memorising his face. And he knows, in that moment, although it’s not the first time he’s thought it, that he loves her. He loves her more than he ever thought possible, he’s been in love with her before he even knew her name. That feeling had grown incomprehensibly the second he had met her and even more so with everything he learned. 

She was a musical theatre nerd in high school, that always makes him laugh because he had been going through some things after his mother died. He was more the… rebel under the bleachers kinda teenager after that. And then she had gone to college and fallen in love with nursing immediately, whilst he had spent his twenties never really knowing where he belonged or where he was going to go. They were different, they were two entirely different people growing up and maybe they weren’t ready for each other, maybe they weren’t the people they were meant to be until the moment Maddie had decided to leave Doug and come to LA. And then they were… the people they were meant to be, two people who would fall in love and start a whole new life together. She was it for him, he knew that much and it didn’t feel terrifying or intimidating, it felt right. Good. Beautiful. 

Chimney nudges his nose into the top of her head as he breathes her in, “It’s weird… what happened was terrifying and I know we can’t just turn it off and I know that there’s still a lot of compartmentalising to do for the both of us but… I’m happy, too, you know? That you’re okay, that I can feel you and..” His other hand moves to rest on her chest, feeling the way her chest rises and falls and the gentle feeling of her heart thumping against his hand, to remind himself that she’s alive. In the darkest moments he had believed otherwise but there she was, filling him with the kind of exhilaration that he had never felt before. It was dizzying at times, it didn’t feel real but holding her in his arms was enough to remind him that this was real. She was his and he was hers and he couldn’t wait to experience what was ahead of them beyond the fear and the hurt and the apprehension. 

“This is gonna sound weird,” He finally says, brushing his fingers through his hair as she shifts just a little closer to him and he stops himself from chastising her because really, he wants her as close as possible. She lifts a leg over his until she’s on his side, nudging her nose into his neck and he knows it has to be hurting her, just as it is him but there’s something bigger than that driving them to want to be as near to each other as possible, “… it’s just… my heart feels… full… I guess, that’s probably a stupid way of putting it and I’m sorry, it’s not coming out right but… being around you, knowing you’re okay… it feels like, I don’t know. I feel happy, happier than I have in a long time and maybe that’s wrong given where we are right now and everything you’ve been through but…” 

“I know what you mean.” He’s grateful when she cuts him off from his rambling, feeling his cheeks heat up as he somehow manages to pull her even closer. “I felt empty and alone until I was being wheeled into the hospital this morning and… I just had this feeling that I was home and now… now I feel safe. I felt safe with you immediately but right now, it’s almost overwhelming, I-I guess…” He feels her tears against his neck, closing his eyes when his own fall, “I’m just so glad you made it through.” 

“Me too, Maddie, me too.”


End file.
